But she was, as were six other (reasonably) well-known faces -- Stephen Baldwin, Corbin Bernsen, Michael Boatman, Kim Coles, Frederique van der Wal and Erik von Detten -- in an abbreviated version of the network's survival game show. The six-episode celebrity edition premieres at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday (Jan. .

It's not that the show's producers misled her in anyway. It's just that Griffin, an avowed fan of reality TV who briefly hosted an MTV talk show about the genre, had seen enough "celebrity" editions of other game and reality shows to think she was in for an easy time.

"It was my wrong assumption that we were going to have this cushy, sweet setup," she says. "Then I got there, and I was like 'Wait. What's with the real 'Mole'? This is the real 'Mole.' ... I kept asking for a pie-eating contest. ... It was way harder than I thought."

Griffin has irked some of her fellow contestants because she has mockingly badmouthed the show in the media and noted that none of the players is exactly setting Hollywood on fire at the moment.

"I'm actually teasing. But here's the thing: Everyone else hates me because I keep saying it's the D-list goes to town, and they're all furious about that," she says. "One of them called and yelled at me because of something I said on [Howard Stern's radio show]. I said 'Honey, none of us thought this was Shakespeare in the Park when we signed up.' "

Griffin says she would "never, never" appear on another reality show. But she enjoyed her time in Hawaii -- especially the fact that the players were allowed to keep whatever money they won.

"A D-list celebrity like myself, I need that money," she says. "Me and Darva and Coolio and that other crowd I run with, we need that cash. If I have one more bad pilot season, I'm gonna do snuff films."